When dance music goes bad

[boyofbadgers]

I've spent a fair chunk of this morning reading this ILM thread about new-not-quite-dance people, MSTRKRFT. Leaving aside the worrying PRML SCRMesque splng, the thread is probably not worth reading in full. It's mostly the same old indie-dance vs dance-purist arguments rehashed around a new band.

So, anyway, here's the thing: despite never having heard these chaps, I am fairly sure I'll hate them. And it's this quote that most convinced me:

I found it infinitely frustrating that Justice and MSTRKRFT would fill the floor with pogoing indie-twats who left at the first sign of anything techy [...] Bizzarely the same crowd was going mad for dubstep.

It's funny, I suspect that ten years ago I would have been on the side of the MSTRKRFT lovers, even though I was far more of music snob in those days. The difference is that, since then, I have turned from someone who only very occasionally danced when not trashed, into someone who will dance at the vaguest sniff of an opportunity. Whether I'm actually any good at it or not is debatable, but I love it like very little else.

Y'see, this is my problem with Big Beat and Breaks and all those other sorts of music generally characterisable as pissed-up and/or stoned student music: it's dance music for people who don't actually like dancing. Or rather, people who don't like dancing like ME.

There are two types of dancing that I do:

1) Indie and pop and r'n'b and whatever: it is all abt the hook and the song and performing and probably being a bit silly to boot. And maybe getting lost in the track, but def. not in the set.

2) Techno and house and minimal and so on: locking into rhythms, spacing out, thinking/feeling my way through the tracks, totally immersing myself in the music for very long stretches of time.

This is where these genres go wrong: they try and apply ideas from 1) to music of type 2). 99.9% of the time it just doesn't work; it's simply not fun for me to dance to. The elements interfere destructively and you end up with what sounds like bad pop AND bad dance.

Ah, but what of rave and bangface stuff and ting, some of you may be asking, do they not combine both? Well, yes, they do. But they do it in a way that when they are good, the hyperkineticism of the music adds to the pop-rush of the hooks. I rarely space out to the music, but the sheer energy of it all pulls me along. For rave to work it had (and has) to be based on techno - despite all the technicolor insanity on top, it's still about the bottom end, and it's still fast and hard and mechafunky - brutalism with groove. If you apply rave aesthetics to a different rhythmic sensibility you invariably end up with something that doesn't make my feet move.

I suppose this all serves as an apology for my becoming a dance snob. It's really not about hating fun, it's about 'fun' things sometimes not being fun. I want dance music I can dance to, not pogo to.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I really don't know why I DO like stuff like Justice because when the pro/anti arguments are along these sorts of lines (my two types of dancing are pretty much exactly the same as yours Rick) it would make perfect sense for me to be anti. Except I'm not.

That thread did make me realise how much I loathe ILM these days and that this loathing actually extends to the electrohouse dudes as well (except Tim and Ronan obv). It's a really depressing place to talk about music - there are a number of songs I love so much that even a year ago I'd've immediately gone to start a thread on them, but these days you'd get some genre fascist or Jess type making sarky comments or nitpicking and no one else showing love. And the bobbins threads are almost entirely people listing records at each other rather than conversing.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

RICKYT: NOT A BENTLEY RHYTHM ACE FAN ahahahahha :)

[rgl.livejournal.com]

Hmm... There's definitely something interesting behind the fact that musical elements tend to move from dance music (by which I mean, music to dance to) into music for other functions more successfully than they move in the opposite direction. This isn't new, either - most fast-paced Baroque music is based on dance beats, even though it has become stylised and more about the hooks or whatever.

Mmm... I'm going to have to think about this one. Possibly it's something to do with repetition. My composition tutor once said that the reason contemporary "classical" composers have failed so badly in their dealings with dance music is they don't really appreciate repetition.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

"it's dance music for people who don't actually like dancing"

this is a big straw man that's getting dished out all too easily now i think. but i interpret it as really meaning 'dance music for people who don't like soul and i do pretty much mean that in the cliched 'black' sense which is a thorny issue i know but still lingers when it comes to understanding why things are how they are. from one straw man to another i suppose!

anyway i personally found Big Beat and Techstep very enjoyable and easy to dance to. With the latter it was a case of immersing yourself and locking into the pattern of breakdowns, hooks and sheer density of it ala Techno and the rave connection. With the former it was the freer, funkier vibe of it all, being slower and so interchangeable with Funk-based music from any period (esp. given that that's where the beats usually came from). If you never got much chance to dance to older Hip-Hop then you might not see the appeal, because Hip-Hop beats today are usually quite a different beast from what they used to be and a lot tighter and sparser by and large.

the Breaks thing is weird because all the ingredients are there and if you like Electro it should make sense. often it totally did but i remember going to Fabric for the first time and being bored rigid by Layo & Bushwacka in the end. Prob. a bit unfair tho as this was more likely down to it being 3am and me being knackered on that basis. I certainly liked a bunch of Breaksy stuff between '99 and '03.

meaning of life

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I am always willing to be proved wrong on such matters. As mentioned yesterday, there are only two types of music: good and boring. Knowing the difference between the two is the key to being a great producer. What makes Peggy Lee's version of Fever better than Susan Cadogan's even though I love Susan's voice? Why can I not bear to listen to Only You by Yazoo but I love Vienna by Ultravox when they are pretty much the same record?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

i am so glad i don't think about this stuff. but...

there is definitely a WAY of dancing to different rhythmns/speeds/beats - i remember the first time i went to a speed garage sort of place (at least i think that's what they were calling it) and i was initially baffled but totally got it as soon as i wandered in amongst ppl.

it's like the first time you find yourself in a mosh pit - THIS is dancing? wtf? cf also TOxic!!!

so "dancing for people who don't like dancing" sounds like crap to me - EVERYone (well ok not everyone) likes dancing, but not everyone is confident to dance in a manner suitable to something new.

if ppl are complaining from a purist view, then there's nothing to be done.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

If only everyone who ever said "it's dance music for people who don't actually like dancing" actually came out and said "it's dance music for people who don't like dancing like ME".

[kitty-goth.livejournal.com]

Hahaha - you are officially the world's biggest music snob. :)

purism

[charltonlido.livejournal.com]

but, purism is fun. its good to hear lots of very similar sounding records. this is why i like minimal, this is why i like western swing, this is why i like hapa haole, this is why i like jeff mills, this is why i like sweetband music.

eclectism is irritating

[cis.livejournal.com]

My two types of dancing are like yours, unsurprisingly. Sometimes I try and apply the attitude relating to 2) to music of type 1) - who cares what it is, let's just dance anyway, I think, and then I realise that the less idealistic part of my brain doesn't agree with me and does just want to dance to something I recognise. sadness. And 1) is for eclecticism and 2) is for purism, in general, though of course it doesn't hold, e.g. an out-of-nowhere song of type 1) in the middle of a set of type 2) can be the most amazing thing.

I call Justice and that 'indie-dance', or 'indie-remix dance', and it doesn't work for me for much the same reasons as yours - I need dance music to be seamless, not to have the clear changeovers between tracks of other musics-to-dance-to, and even when they're not in a set I can tell from the music how it would be used, I don't know how. Sometimes people get indie-remix dance right - those remixes of the Killers which make it more pop and at the same time more useable in a dance set - but often it just sounds like a shouty indie track with some extra nods to YPDM, like those b-side remixes of indie songs that made me think remixes pointless.

so, yeah, IAWTP.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

omg it's the return of the indie dance wars!

course i remember the indie dance wars to end all indie dance wars. mutter grumble. indie dance wars are stupid, and ppl are stupid, and (one) love means nothing In some strange quarters

irony

[charltonlido.livejournal.com]

it is good that you understand irony, steve.

a period of time would not elapse between the two, ideally. as they would not be heard on the same night, or at the same place

[dogrando.livejournal.com]

You've got me thinking about the term "dance music" and what we mean by really dancing as opposed to just [flaps hands] dancing. People dance for all sorts of reasons. Often it is, at least partly, social: trying to pull, wanting to be seen in the right places, breaking down social barriers (e.g. the ceilidh at the wedding). Sometimes it's in immediate response to elements in the music (which is where I'd place jumping up and down to pop and the bouncier end of indie). Occasionally, it's an excuse to take drukqs. Obviously, none of these things are really dancing, and you don't need dance music (it the sense we're using) to do them.

If pressed to say what qualifies as really dancing, I guess I'd mutter something pretentious like: it's dancing as a physical expression of a trancelike mental state, and it's a response to the set as a whole rather than specifically what's happening right now... and I might even get the light of far-off AFX sets in my eyes as I talk about the elements of the music having the role of a carrier rather than of a signal... and then I'd look a bit ashamed at being so airy-fairy, but what the hell. Certainly, this is the kind of thing I associate with the best of the genres which get termed "dance music".

So I guess what I'm wondering is, why is it that we think of this thing as really dancing (and so say things like "...for people who don't like to dance" when we mean "...for people who don't like to dance in this sense" and end up confusing and offending people who assume we mean the more general sense) and that these generes get called "dance music"? I'm tempted to say something like: you might go to an indie gig and pogo at the front or chat at the back as you fancied, but it would be unusual to go to a techno night and not dance at all... but that's undermined by the fact that I'll cheerfully listen to techno at home without dancing at all, and in fact I can't really think of a form of music which I'd dance to in a club but wouldn't consider playing at home.

It's a puzzle.

Everything Rock Vs. Collage Rock

[koganbot]

Brief shots.

(1) Read the chapter in The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll entitled "Collage Rock Vs. Everything Rock."

(2) "Square Biz" far better than "Pump Up the Volume."

(3) Haven't listened to the new Arling & Cameron, but I always end up liking them more than item (2) would lead me to expect.

(4) Most of the Teddybears' alb. is lame but "Yours to Keep" f. Neneh Cherry is insanely pretty, albeit not as pretty as if it had been sung by Hilary Duff and produced by actual pop producers.

(5) The dance vs. dance problem seems more British than 'Murrican.

(6) Eddy and Edd and Allred and Finney and Moore and [whole bunch of other good people] post more on ILX than here.

(7) Live Journal gives you built-in excuse not to finish your ideas (no thread keeps going more than a couple days).

(8) The "Reply to This" function must be destroyed.

[ultraruby.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I dunno. My two types of dancing are similar to yours, I think. It's either all about the songs or all about the loops and swirls and spaces. As to genre and coolness and everything....if I thought too much about that stuff I might not dance at all.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Cor. huge discussion. Agree with alot of what dogrando says, i think.

I think, I'm broadly similar to you on this one, R.

Although I do sometimes get that 'space-out'/transcendent thing from dancing to shiny pop, so hmm.

It's maybe a different type of spaceout, as its about the rush and pure physical/emotional joy of dancing to stuff I love, but it's also of getting inside the music/rhythmn (had a mo' in a club dancing to 'Dirrrty' recently that was utterly wonderful)

Main difference I find in clubs that play the shiny pop, and those that play the kind of electronic stuff I like to dance is that the pace/tempo/atmosphere is much more variable with the shiny pop.

Dancing becomes more about moments to me at this kind of thing, and of 'riding' shifts in style etc

Whereas say, at LOST, which has been, I guess, fairly purist on a Detroit techno (although they seem to be diversifying) tip, it's about a long progression, often playing out over hours, of deep immersion into music, feeling

And, I had a similar moment of 'I think I may be a dancing snob again' after a joyous night in Brighton years ago, where Kevin Saunderson was DJ'ing, which I wittered about here (http://plumshome.blogspot.com/2001_04_01_plumshome_archive.html#3013335), if yr interested.

That was about rediscovering the amazing states I can reach but that only for me work with certain sorts of music. And the logical progression that I'd really seek out those forms.